Quote Originally Posted by Eviebae View Post
Listening to the Fancast I got to thinking about the haze and the pile of zombie bodies outside the Arena. Maybe the reason they kept the zombie bodies outside and didn't eat them was because they gave off the haze?

It's so odd:
  • The haze seems to have something to do with turning people into zombies
  • But the zombies avoided the area the haze was strongest because it was supposedly toxic to them (tho they might be used to it now).
  • Decomposing zombies give off some version of the haze.
  • But zombies can and do eat each other (maybe only if the victim/loser is alive).
  • When they brought back the dead bodies of other zombies, they didn't seem to eat them.


Maybe like how the regular zombies can't tell the difference between a Skittles smell and an authentic zombie; they also can't smell the difference between a zombie and a human after they are dead.
Maybe they brought back all bodies they found and smarter ones sorted out the inedible ones when they got to the Arena?

It reminds me of a sad news story a few years ago where a woman had been taking DMSO for pain (she had terminal cancer) and while she was in the emergency ward her body began to give off toxic fumes. The nurses working with her passed out and had symptoms for months afterwards. Because the hospital were aiming for d#####es of the year by saying it was all in the nurses imagination; they did all this research into figuring out what had happened. It was finally determined that it was due to chemical reactions between her body and the DMSO that caused her body to give off a toxic gas.
It could be, I had a different thought that is pretty gross. My brother is a foreman/ paramedic. He was told that some meth addicts were saving urine and then purifying the meth back out of the urine. Now, back to me biochemistry dude. The body often metabolize drugs, that is change them chemically before eliminating them. Meth is not, it comes out the same chemical.

My guess is Ink might have thought something similar for the gas. Maybe he could purify some of the gas from the bodies to use it as a raw material for hs experiments. Maybe the chemical is changed by the body when it gets in the saliva. But, inside the body it might be a purer form. Maybe a combination of purer gas and a higher concentration is required for special zombies. Sure, a bite can change someone into a zombie, but they are not as robust as those that were made at ground zero.

Kinda like a bottle of grape juice. Poor yourself a glass and then refill the bottle water. After too many glasses, it is more like water than grape juice. But, what we have with the biters is worse, because each glass is like the bottle. Take a drink and refill with water. People who poor the third or fourth glass from the bottle start off with weak flavor to begin with.

If Ink collects and concentrates the gas from dead bodies, he can eliminate this degradation and start making better ones. These in turn can make ones that are not as good as they are, but are better than ones made several generations from the initial outbreak.


My bias was the agent was a biological contagion that would replenish and concentrate itself in each body to avoid above process. It was also that Ink made the special ones. Going back to a gas where the exposure decays through transmission and high concentrations make special vampires seems to fits the data better